If everything's stored on your phone, things tend to slow down. Here's how to move SMSes to Gmail and apps to the SD card

Almost functioning like mini-computers, phones today carry most of your important data. You’re unwittingly carrying around everything from pictures, videos, notes, texts and so much more. Even the applications that you install constitute important data. Should something happen to your phone you'd want to retrieve not just your personal data but also the minor customisations you’ve made in the phone to make it uniquely yours. Since they're so popular, we'll look at backing up Android phones.

Back up SMS messages to Gmail account

An application called SMS Backup (Christoph Studer) is a very easy and effective way to back up SMSes from your Android phone to your Gmail account. Visit http://dgit.in/GW8IY9 to push it to your phone or search for it on your Google’s Play Store. The app requires you to have IMAP switched on in your Gmail account. To do this, click on the Sprocket icon at the top-right corner of your Gmail account. On launching the app for the first time, you’ll need to enter your Gmail credentials and the first batch of 100 SMSes will begin uploading to Gmail, under a new label titled SMS. The app will automatically back up all your texts in batches of 100. The texts will be filed.

SMS Backup on Android

Back up with Astro

Although a lot of backup features are built into Android via syncing with Google, it’s not the only service you should depend on. Astro is actually a file manager but supports application backup. Follow these steps: Download Astro > Launch > Tap Application Backup. Now select the applications you want to back up and tap the Backup button. The applications you selected will get backed up to your SD Card. Note that the app publisher should allow backups to SD card.

For rooted phones

Users with superuser access on rooting have the option of using a superlative application called Titanium Backup. Incidentally Titanium had won a place in our list of top Android apps some issues back. Follow these steps to back up phone data using Titanium Backup: Install the App > Tap the menu button > Tab Batch. Now select market apps, system apps and a whole bunch of content. You can even schedule backups. An excellent app when you’re switching ROMS frequently.